Thunder was rolling in on the california coast

I left everything and everyone i knew in January 2008 for California and college.

It was the biggest descision slash risk i'd ever taken so far. My family and friends, my securities and memories, were soon 3,000 miles away in Michigan. This was a change i had desperatly needed for a while. I was becoming a person i didn't like back in MIchigan, begetting my morals and principles in search of cheap thrills and temporary bliss. Somehow it still shocked everyone when i told them i was California bound, sure i'd been talking about it since i graduated high school four years earlier, but i wan never the kind of girl that had the get up and go to actually do it.

My family was less then supportive. My mother never has been so it was no surprise to me when she told me she was ceratin of my failure. But i wouldn't let that stop me. I was out to prove myself, not just to her but to everyone who thinks that sleepy southwest Michigan is all there is out there. If i'd have stayed, by now i'd either be pregnant or married. Neither of which i have planned anytime soon.

There i was living the life i'd dreamed. Free and unattatched, the wind blowing in my hair as i rode in the convertable of a man i'd met living here, origionally from Turkey, driving down some desolate stretch of costal highway. I'll never forget the smell of the ocean, i couldn't see the water but i could feel it. The grass that bordered the embankment of the coast was a dried up yellow and it blew in the warm wind. Thunder was rolling in and the sky was pregnant with rain. The colors of the night were settling in and a mysterious and very foreshadowing purple had settles into the horizen as we drove. And as i closed my eyes and stuck my arm out making air waves dipping my hand up and down a song came on the radio.

"California" by Phantom Planet

"Turn it up." I whispered, and he did. As the song began i was filled with the awe inspiring moment i'd been waiting so long for. I realized i was in California, i had made it. I hadn't let anyone hold me back, i was living my dreams. This was real.

This was me, this was my life. This was my home.

And nothing will ever change that.